Create a Child as a Monster
by Ainikki
Summary: Or, that one fic where Jukai decided to kill Daigo and everything turned out just fine for everyone. Except Daigo, anyway. Cross-posted from Ao3, without notes.


After Hyakkimaru leaves-too young; Shiba's samurai had always seemed too young to him, raised and sent to slaughter by age fourteen—Jukai grips his doorpost for a few minutes, feeling like a chapter of his life has ended.

Watching Hyakkimaru's back recede, Jukai remembers his first mission as a samurai, putting out fires in a wooded area that the local lord had nicknamed Matchstick Town. He had spent his formative years fighting fires, treating burns, helping samurai and non-samurai alike.

It couldn't last. When the old lord died and the new lord took over, Jukai had been scarcely twenty, the only one in his immediate social circle with any experience with anatomy or medicine. The new lord had turned that knowledge toward torture of his enemies, and eventually, toward crucifixion of the people in the villages he'd conquered.

Seeing Hyakkimaru go, Jukai recalls that he used to break people for a living. He sighs and turns away from the door, saddened that he couldn't do much, in the end, to make his foster son whole.

He tries to stay in that house after Hyakkimaru leaves, but... Well. At first, he feels lonely-not his usual loneliness, borne of terrible deeds gone unpunished and unforgiven, making him a pariah in his own mind. No. With Hyakkimaru, and before with Kaname, there had been someone to rouse in the morning, someone to make breakfast with, someone to go walking in the woods with for wood and water and medicine, someone to comfort during hunger or storms. Lacking that, the walls lose their mooring on him, making him feel hollow inside as well as dead.

The morning after Hyakkimaru leaves, he is attacked by a kamataichi with six tails and claws as long as his arms-presumably a relative of the three-tailed fox Hyakkimaru had killed. It goes down easily enough, head half-gone with the first sword swipe, white tails sliced through the next. Inside of fifteen seconds it is dead. Jukai's hands are steady, his pulse firm as he kills it, but after it stops moving he starts to shake from head to toe. He drops his sword, reeling. Battles are always this way to him: appallingly swift and soul-killing, bringing back too many memories.

He doesn't know why he'd bothered to protect himself. Instinct, he supposes. Training. And because, despite all of his valid reasons, he's still not sure he's ready to die.

The demons keep appearing near the house. When Hyakkimaru had been around, he had guarded the road while Jukai had seen patients, but Hyakkimaru is not here. In all likelihood, he is not coming back, for a long time. It is this realization that makes Jukai pack up his wagon and materials and plans and get on the road; patients are everywhere, and he doesn't need a house to live.

A house, though, had been comfortable. As Jukai travels, an ache develops in both hands when he wakes each morning, the cold wind coming off the mountain pressing his skin to his bones. Age, and fatigue, and despair make him move slowly, but he cannot go home. He's getting too old to fight demons.

As he travels farther from Daigo's capital, the villages grow fewer and far between, and most of the people he encounters are dead or dying. Seeing this need, Jukai tends to the dying, not because they need it-death would solve all their problems soon enough-but because he is there.

He wonders, often, if the only reason Hyakkimaru had survived is because he'd been there. Death might have been kinder. There is so much that medicine cannot cure and it outrages him that, even with all he has done, he doesn't have the power to restore even a single person to full and sound health.

Rage looks like despair on Jukai, and he knows it. Ever since his suicide attempt had failed, all his anger is directed inward, at himself. It is condign; he deserves it. Crucifying one child is unforgivable, and he had crucified hundreds. And not just children. Their mothers, fathers, even his own friends if they got on the bad side of Shiba dono somehow. After a while he had stopped looking at their faces, but he had killed them all the same.

Hyakkimaru would often look at him, still and quiet but somehow concerned, when he had gotten in moods like this; he had brought him tea and sat nearby until the feeling dissipated. In some ways it had been a blessing that he couldn't speak. Jukai doesn't know how to explain even half of what he feels in words.

What he had done has no appropriate atonement. Even if his skill with medicine became magical, it would not suffice. Nothing does. Nothing can. He knows this, but he keeps trying, moving from battlefield to battlefield, teaching children which mushrooms are safe to eat, binding minor wounds, hunting game for the starving despite his trembling hands.

It is when he is putting a new leg on a dead man that Hyakkimaru returns to him in a whirlwind of blood.

He does not expect to see him there, and the vision seems dreamlike, taken from some nightmare in the depths of his mind. This battlefield is unusual: the ghoul-like demons that feed on dead and living flesh are everywhere, as if springing from a shared source. It is not difficult to see a demonic presence here, but even so. Since Hyakkimaru left him, Jukai has considered him permanently far away, out of reach.

The swords attached to his arms are still whole and capable; he cuts through two demons without trouble, and wheels to turn on a third with a slight hitch in his step. Jukai notices the makeshift leg prosthesis and frowns a little.

When Hyakkimaru faces him—recognizes him—Jukai notices the skin. And the whole leg. And that Hyakkimaru is wincing from where the ghoul's claws went in. Otherwise, though, he has no expression; nothing to indicate that there is anything cruel or terrible or frightening in what he has just done. Like Jukai, his life has become an endless cycle of killing without looking at faces.

Jukai is mostly dead inside, and he never wanted to see Hyakkimaru that way. He approaches without fear and clings to him despite the blood because he needs to keep him human. He'll never be able to make him whole. "How terrifying you are," Jukai says, and means it, but he rests his forehead on his son's in an unspoken gesture of welcome and relief. When he looks up, Hyakkimaru is smiling, and Jukai remembers that they are used to communicating without words.

With this in mind, Jukai notices-perhaps better than Hyakkimaru does-that he's in rotten shape. The stump of his false leg is swollen and purpled with bruising. There are cuts-some superficial, some not-where the ghouls' claws had sunk in and torn the fabric of his ragged kimono. It's raining, but there's a layer of grime across the skin of his face that indicates it's been a while since he'd last bathed.

"Let's get you cleaned up," he says, and Hyakkimaru follows him to his cave without a word, like they're falling into an old routine.

Learning that he can talk is a welcome surprise. He is more than half-whole, and it has scarcely been a year since he'd left. Jukai feels torn between pride at his success and fear at his growing inhumanity. Hyakkimaru had always been a quick learner: efficient at dispatching the demons sent to hound his life, and Jukai's. Now, though, there's something different in how he moves, how he expresses himself.

Hyakkimaru used to resent the demons. Now he hates them with a rage so acidic that Jukai is afraid if he gets any on him it will go straight through to the bone.

Something has changed. "Daigo," Hyakkimaru tells him, voice emotionless, shoulders tense. "He sold me to the demons. They're still eating."

Hyakkimaru had found his father, and his father had been the one to sell his body.

Jukai's heart skips a beat and he places himself at Hyakkimaru's side again, present and listening, heart open and devastated. He had known Hyakkimaru's quest would be harsh and terrible, but he had never anticipated how badly Hyakkimaru's righteous rage would twist him into something not much better than a deranged killer, out for revenge—against the demons, against Daigo, against anything in his way. Just like every other horrible samurai Jukai had ever known.

"I want that," Hyakkimaru insists, pointing to the prosthetic leg near the center of the cave. "I need it."

_No. You don't. Clearly not._

Deep down, some part of Jukai has always believed that Hyakkimaru would have found some way to live even if Jukai hadn't found him. He should have been dead long before Jukai did. It is his ability and will to survive and adapt that set him apart. Prosthetics are just tools. They won't help Hyakkimaru be human.

When he destroys the leg, he fully expects the rage-fueled Hyakkimaru to stab him-take the leg, repair it somehow-but that is not what happens at all.

Hyakkimaru may be full of rage, but it's not directed at Jukai. When Jukai learns about his friend that he needs to get back, something warms in his chest, and he sighs and takes a look at Hyakkimaru's makeshift leg.

As he sandpapers the splinters out and levels the edge of the bottom, Hyakkimaru gulps down soup and regards him with a curious stare.

They're trapped in a cave overnight, landslide trapping them, but Hyakkimaru doesn't rest, he needs to dig them out, somehow, and as fast as possible. Jukai is concerned that anger is behind this energy, and asks some questions that he finds it hard to answer himself.

"If you keep going down this path," he says, "there will be nothing but blood and corpses around you. Will you be human then?"

"It's not," Hyakkimaru says, his clumsy way with speech showing itself "There is someone."

"Who?"

"They're—not here now." His shoulders set and he digs with purpose, poking a hole that reveals outside light.

"And you need to get back to them?"

"Yes."

"Maybe they can keep you human." Jukai hadn't been able to. He hadn't prepared Hyakkimaru for all of this. He hadn't known that Hyakkimaru's life had been set on a bloody course for him since the moment of his birth.

Jukai has always believed that people have options—different ways of living and being. Hyakkimaru's choices are terrible ones, worse than his own: to live without his senses, his body, his whole mind, or to live whole and broken by unlove and violence?

Jukai helps Hyakkimaru dig, not because he wants him to leave, but because he wants him to find his friend. He wants him to be human, no matter what it costs. It is the same wish he desires for himself, in different terms. After everything he's done, he doesn't deserve to be counted part of humanity, either.

Hyakkimaru's unexpected reappearance in his life reaffirms some of his precepts and shakes others. He does not know how long he can keep persevering in selfless service in the face of no mercy, no self-forgiveness. He sees no end to his self-hatred except in death.

But then—Hyakkimaru surprises him by asking for his name.

Of course, he'd never given it. There had been no need. Hyakkimaru couldn't hear before, and he had always known the way home from wherever he'd strayed in the woods. Jukai almost gives it, name on the tip of his tongue when he changes his mind. "It doesn't matter, my name."

Hyakkimaru squints at him, an unfamiliar expression like recognition or mischief. "I know you. You're—my mom."

Tears spring to Jukai's eyes unbidden. Someone had taught him that word. Not "mother"—"mom." "Don't be stupid," Jukai says, and the tears are in his voice, too. "That's not what I am."

He hugs Hyakkimaru one more time before he goes.

When Hyakkimaru leaves him again, it feels different. When Kaname had left him after being denied the answers that he wanted-the lies that he'd wanted Jukai to give-it had felt sharp and terrible. This time, watching the son that had not rejected him despite being denied what he wanted, he feels a twinge of hope.

Before he's out of sight, something sharp bites into his ankle, and he understands. He's been immune to them because he scarcely ever feels anything at all. It's been a long time—a year? More?—since Jukai felt much of anything except a resigned, inarguable despair. The pinpricks from the ghoul's teeth bother him for the rest of the day, in a cursory way, but he likes the small pain there. It reminds him that he can still feel things. Like Hyakkimaru, he's recovering from a condition he doesn't understand.

Hyakkimaru is a monster-was born as one, perhaps-but he doesn't have to be one forever. He has a friend. He has one parent, whether he wants him or not-and it seems that he does. He is a demon recovering towards humanity, like a snake shedding an old skin. It's messy to see, but he's glad to see it. He needs to believe that Hyakkimaru is not a demon.

Maybe Jukai doesn't have to be, either. Well, he is. When he sleeps he hears nothing but the screams of the men, women, and children he expertly crucified in his lord's name: one at a time, one after the other, in neat aligned rows. It's similar to how he scans battlefields now, and his stomach clenches on the memories.

_I am not ,_ he insists in his own mind._ I am different now. I am not a demon anymore._

_I did not raise a monster._

He only half-believes himself.

* * *

War comes to Daigo's land unexpectedly, and Jukai is caught in the middle of a battle so fierce he has to leave most of his gear and wagon behind, leaving him with only his sack of medicines and a few prosthetics. "Well, I started with less," he mutters to himself. It's true, but he feels too old to start all over again. His reunion with Hyakkimaru has convinced him that he is still looking for something-an answer, forgiveness, atonement of some kind-but he doesn't know where to find it.

He hopes, sincerely, that Hyakkimaru is not in Daigo's land for this war. He also prays to the Buddha from the bottom of his soul that Hyakkimaru is not the cause of the war, because if that's the case, his own guilt might overwhelm him.

How many people have suffered because he helped Hyakkimaru live?

No: wrong question. If the Buddha had found a dying child, he would have helped it no matter what condition it was in. Jukai knows he made the right decision.

Then it must be the fault of Kagemitsu Daigo. That fit: since his service to Shiba dono, Jukai has carried an internalized distrust of other samurai. And the kind of deal that would require his own son to be broken in pieces and turned half-demon is not something Jukai wants to contemplate.

Could he have ever done that to a child, much less his own?

He remembers the children he crucified. Their agony had been terrible, but comparatively brief, and not something he would have chosen. If he could choose now, he would gladly sacrifice his life to restore even one of those dead children from the grave.

He remembers peeling the crab off Hyakkimaru's face for the first time. He remembers teaching him how to keep his fingers back from the fire so they wouldn't burn. He remembers Hyakkimaru's expression when he looked at him, really looked, eyes or not-intent and focused and interested. He remembers Hyakkimaru bringing him tea and boiling water for bandages when Jukai had fallen ill and needed help with his patients and his own treatment. Hyakkimaru is creative, and intelligent, and tries to help when he realizes a need. Jukai realizes something he's always known: Hyakkimaru, demonic scars or not, had all the makings of a fine person.

Daigo threw that away. Unforgivable.

Jukai intimately understands that he has done terrible things, but he also understands that had not chosen to do them of his own free will. They had been threatened and coerced out of him. That coercion had led to Jukai's suicide and rebirth. Far from being coerced, Daigo had willingly sacrificed a child—not even to save others, but to satisfy his own lust for power.

For a brief moment, Jukai's inward rage is directed outside of himself, and he feels genuinely sorry for Hyakkimaru-and violently angry at Kagemitsu Daigo.

He is shaken out of his rage by the cries of another child-a boy? a girl?-screaming to be let go of while on horseback; the rider is wearing Daigo's livery. He stops. Looks. Wonders. Then he moves on.

The rains come down hard, and Jukai halts near the river where the trees are thick so that he stands a chance of not getting soaked through. The storm becomes more violent, and he eventually emerges to seek out the village nearby.

There appear to be lights in the village, but as he gets closer, he realizes it is on fire.

In front of him, a woman in a blue-green kimono that appears far too expensive to be exposed to this kind of weather comes stumbling toward him, falling, and he catches her before she falls, pulling her under the protection of a wide oak tree with several layers of leaves. The rain starts to let up, and Jukai twists to rummage through his sack for a blanket for the woman, who has shivering shoulders and shaking hands.

"Are you all right?" Jukai asks. "Who did this? The Asakura? I thought they were days away."

"No," she says in a small voice, wrapping his blanket around her shoulders with a nod of gratitude. "I think it is-my son. Hyakkimaru." She takes a deep breath. "My husband says he's a monster," the woman says in a voice so soft that he scarcely hears. "I don't want to believe it."

Jukai squares his shoulders and looks at her. This woman reminds him of his lord's women-the concubines he'd abducted from villages after having their children stolen or killed in front of them; the hopeless women that couldn't afford to bear another girl and came to him for remedies, treatments, cures. She looks like them, and he immediately slips into his doctoring persona before he realizes it, giving her a warm smile he barely feels. "Do not. I've met him. He's not-" He doesn't know how to finish that sentence. Not a monster? Not strictly true. But Hyakkimaru's monstrousness is not his fault. There is a parallelism between himself and his foster son that he as always seen but rarely acknowledged: they are who they are because of what others made them into. It's not their fault they were given poor choices. "He has someone that cares about him," he finishes lamely, because he doesn't know how else to say what he means."

She nods absently. "Dororo. The little boy."

The friend Hyakkimaru mentioned has a name. That's good to know. "Yes. But he wasn't the one I was talking about."

The woman's forehead puckers slightly and she tucks her chin as her eyes widen, looking so much like Hyakkimaru in confusion that he almost smiles again. He opens his sack. He shows her the prosthetic that he'd used to make Hyakkimaru's arms. Her eyes drift from it to him with an expression like awe.

"It was you," she breathes. "You saved him. From the river."

Jukai nods.

"Thank you," she says, highly polite and with tears in her eyes. "You did what I couldn't."

"What's that?"

"You found a way to let him live. You gave him a way to set things right." She wipes her face on her sleeve. "I couldn't. I had no choice. I looked for him but-"

Jukai makes a shushing motion. "It's fine. I did what anyone would do when they found a child abandoned, in these harsh times. Please don't-thank me." Especially because the demon headed their way was his son. His, not Daigo's, no matter what the sigil around Hyakkimaru's neck said. The woman was right. He'd let Hyakkimaru live. He'd taught him to fight for his life. His interference had resulted in this situation.

The woman ignores his protestations. "Thank you. Whatever happens-thank you."

The sound of hoofbeats sounds behind Jukai, and he turns to see Hyakkimaru, eyes red and covered in drying blood, riding up on a pale horse.

The horse he is riding on is made of fire, and the life has been burned out of his face. He's out for murder, plain and simple, and Jukai fears for anything in his way. The woman lets out a gasp of shock and hides behind him.

A hand grips his shoulder, and at first Jukai thinks it is Hyakkimaru's mother, but he turns and sees an old blind beggar in the garb of a priest, carrying a sword. "Are you scared?" the man asks him.

"I'm terrified."

"So is he." The old man sounds profoundly sad. "Can you help him?"

Jukai gulps. He understands the kind of fanatical revenge that Hyakkimaru is experiencing. That kind of fanaticism is what had prompted Jukai himself to take his own life. "I can try."

He leaves the woman in the care of the old priest, then takes ten steps forward. Twenty. Thirty. Hyakkimaru sees him and raises both sword arms in an attitude of aggression, but he doesn't attack.

"Hyakkimaru," he breathes. The horse in front of him stands perfectly still. "How terrifying you are."

The sword arms lower a fraction of an inch on each side. The eyes glowing like coals extinguish, becoming the flat, inert glass that Jukai had fashioned for him. And, for the briefest of moments, the fire dies down.

Jukai can see his son smiling.

* * *

Jukai removes his statue of the Goddess of Mercy from his kimono and looks down at it, seeking one true answer in its serene face. But there are none. The metal is cold and it starts to rain.

He closes his eyes and sees, as brightly as if it's burned there, the image of Hyakkimaru running toward him on the river where he was abandoned-to the same boat he was found in-and he's whole. The image had seemed miraculous at first, like a mirage or a delusion, but then he'd gotten closer and Jukai had seen the blood, the flat glass eyes-and the pursuer. The pursuer had been wearing Daigo's livery, and looked to be younger than Hyakkimaru. A retainer? Jukai had squinted and seen that the man had three eyes. The strangeness does not faze him so much as the relentless tear through the bamboo thicket, the disregard for danger or any of the life he was trampling underfoot or cutting away with his katana.

"Hyakkimaru."

The pursuer had been a demon of some kind. Hyakkimaru-had been bloody and scared and incomplete. Again.

Buddha have mercy, not again.

On the shore of the river, Jukai exits his boat and walks to the protection of the nearest tree. He regards his statue with dispassion. There is no mercy here: not for Hyakkimaru, and not for himself. He should break the statue, but he can't bring himself to. He sets it down under the tree, then sits and stares at it for a while, contemplating what to do next.

He is sick of watching children die. By some kind of indefinable intuition, he understands that Daigo has coerced other children into hunting his own child, perpetuating an endless cycle of bloodshed to those who should be protected from such monstrosity. He understands Hyakkimaru's extreme needs better, having witnessed Daigo's pursuers and his own child's bloody hands. His fists clench, and in that moment, he comes to a resolution.

He will kill Kagemitsu Daigo.

He will need help.

The old man who had been behind him on first meeting the void-faced, engulfed-in-flames Hyakkimaru again introduces himself as Biwamaru, a blind Buddhist priest. He gives his own name and entrusts his decision to the priest's care. Biwamaru hms for a moment after hearing it as if pondering a riddle.

"It isn't like I don't understand," Biwamaru says. "I saw that child the day he was born. I smelled a curse. Even if you kill Daigo, the curse won't end."

"Won't it? Why?"

Biwamaru sighs. "Daigo is not the problem. There is always another Daigo. Men lust after power and sacrifice anything to get it, even if they have to sacrifice things that aren't their own. It isn't right, but it's common. Putting down Daigo won't change the world. If it would, I might consider killing him myself."

"You've seen what he did to my son."

"Hyakkimaru is the son and heir of Kagemitsu Daigo, isn't he?"

"No. You're wrong." Jukai holds his head up. "I am his father. He's been cruelly abused by another samurai. Isn't it within my rights to take that samurai's head?"

"Going by the laws of this world, you would be correct," Biwamaru says. "But what would it accomplish?"

"It would..." Jukai thinks. "My son could be whole. The people Daigo oppresses could be free. We could try to build a better world together."

"Ah," Biwamaru says. "And if you die in the attempt?"

He sighs. He's considered the possibility. He's not even that opposed to it. "I trust Hyakkimaru to build a better world."

"Do you?" Biwamaru smiles. "Perhaps you're right. Or, more right than not. It is difficult, in these dark times, to tell what is best to do. I see that you are going to do as you think right. I will not stop you, but I will not help you, either."

That is more endorsement than Jukai had expected from the old priest. "And will you be there-to help build the better world?"

Biwamaru's smile widens. "I will always be here, until death takes me. Seeking better paths through the darkness." Biwamaru picks up Jukai's statue, and puts it in his satchel. "I will use this to help find the light."

Jukai is relieved. There isn't a better caretaker for that old symbol than this priest that he can think of.

"Also," Biwamaru says, "if you're looking for the people that oppose Kagemitsu Daigo, I can show you where to go."

* * *

The Asakura spy camp is practically inside the walls of Daigo's capital. That surprises Jukai. When he'd first conceived of the notion of doing something so recklessly crazy and necessary as killing Kagemitsu Daigo, he had not thought that help would be so nearby. Biwamaru leads him directly to the camp like he's been there many times before, then leaves him just as quickly, not even stopping to eat with Jukai and the other refugees of the war.

There are many such refugees, men, women, children and animals all: he has never seen such a throng of needy life congregated in one place.

He had also thought that gaining access to the Asakura leaders to share his plan would be difficult, but again, he is mistaken. His fame as a doctor precedes him, and the old priest had made his introductions before he'd left. Jukai is starting to think the old priest wants Daigo dead just as badly as all these suffering people.

The leader of the rebellion reminds him a bit of himself: older, gruff, missing an arm and an eye. Jukai offers one of his last remaining prosthetic arms, which fits perfectly over the stump, and the two are instant friends.

"This freak rebel is a godsend," the Asakura leader says. Jukai blinks when he realizes he's referring to Hyakkimaru. "Daigo is completely distracted, and his forces are scattered. There are a few different ways to break in to the palace complex, but our best spies think that through the drainage ditch is best-there's a drought, so the water won't reach past your knees in any case."

Jukai nods. "When are we leaving?"

"Tonight, if the traps for the scouts get laid in time. Otherwise, tomorrow."

"Good." Jukai nods firmly. "Good."

Getting into the palace complex is as easy as the Asakura spy captain indicated. If Jukai fails in his mission, there will be five other accomplished spies just behind him-in fact, they might beat him to his objective. Never in his life has Jukai wanted so badly to be the first to set foot in a place as now.

As the Buddha would have it, he's lucky: he chooses the shortest route with the fewest obstacles, and there aren't any guards in his path. It feels like something is pulling him toward Daigo like an arrow to a target, and he draws his sword and breaks into a run.

A red screen door directly in front of him opens, whisper-quiet, revealing a tall, thin man with a scar of crossed lighting on his forehead. It's Kagemitsu Daigo.

Jukai freezes like he's been rooted to the spot. Damn it all. Now that he's here-finally here-he can't do it. He's been a pacifist too long; he's out of practice; the old priest was right-

"Who are you?"

Jukai feels his hands start to shake and clamps himself still. "I'm a doctor."

"A doctor with a sword?" Daigo's eyebrow arches in an expression of disdain, and Jukai wonders why anyone would have ever followed this thing that is more demon than man. Jukai swallows. Daigo must have been human once. But he'd abandoned his family. And Hyakkimaru had chosen Jukai as a parent. He had understood that much. If he accepts Hyakkimaru as his son-and he does-then is it his responsibility to protect as well as avenge him.

"I was a samurai, once. Under lord Shiba."

Daigo's disdain turns to amusement. "Shiba has been dead for thirty years. Unless you intend to use that katana on the makwara outside, I think you'll find yourself outmatched."

Good. Jukai doesn't need to explain why he's here. Daigo is just evil, not an idiot. "If you're so sure, why don't you draw?"

Daigo sighs. "This world needs doctors," Daigo says. "You have done no harm to me that I can see, even if you intended it. Go and treat the sick or something. If you leave me now, I will let you live."

Being so summarily dismissed, Jukai feels the old familiar rage he had experienced every time his lord had ordered him to butcher another town. Daigo senses his anger and draws his sword. They lock eyes. This has to happen now. No backing out. No saving face.

He must kill Kagemitsu Daigo.

Daigo is smaller than him, light and fast, but Jukai is more nimble than he appears, and his size gives him the advantage of anchoring the battle in the place of his choosing. Daigo tries to rush past him out the door and is rebuffed by an arm larger than his head; Jukai pulls his neck in for a lock and slaps his sword out of his hand and thinks, easy, this is too easy.

Then Daigo twists free and slaps his own sword aside, bending to retrieve his weapon and stand for a counterattack so fast Jukai can barely see it, and there it is: the family resemblance. Like Hyakkimaru, he's fast: almost too fast for Jukai to keep up with, but he has the same strong preference for the left side.

When Jukai raises his weapon again, it's a feint; he cuts low on the left side-the one Daigo wants to look at; the one he's most distracted by-and draws his sword up in a tight arc across Daigo's body, left hip to right shoulder. His wrist cramps, but the job is done: Daigo is still standing, but his intestines are falling out and his throat gurgles blood.

Damn it, still alive. Jukai slices him through the eyes, so deep he cuts into bone, and Daigo falls to his knees, slumping his shoulders and gasping, "I...can't...lose. The demons..."

"...are all dead," Jukai finishes. "You're beaten." Jukai snorts. "Hyakkimaru wins."

Daigo's head twitches upward in recognition of the name. "Hyakkimaru?"

"I'm his father," Jukai explains. He withdraws his katana from Daigo's eyes, and Daigo falls completely to the floor and lies still.

He turns around, and there is a little boy in a green vest that can hardly be called a kimono standing there with his mouth agape. Jukai cleans his sword hastily, sheathes and runs to the child. "Are you all right? Are you hurt?"

The boy shakes his head. "That...that was amazing! Are you aniki's dad?"

Aniki? "You mean Hyakkimaru?"

He nods. "Yeah. The only one I've ever seen fight like that is him! Can you teach me?"

Jukai smiles fondly at this child that has probably never killed anyone, and probably will never have to. "Take me to your aniki, and maybe we'll see."

Dororo leads Jukai to Hyakkimaru so fast he kicks up dust; so quickly that Jukai can't keep up. As Jukai follows him, he smells smoke.

In the darkening sky, a column of ash cuts a wavy line, broken by wind. Jukai stumbles and asks, "Is the palace on fire?"

"Not anymore," Dororo pants, still running as he answers. "It burned down."

The sun sets as Jukai follows the child, making it more difficult to see. He is about to call out and ask him to stop when he runs into him. He takes a step back, apologizing for stepping on his feet. Dororo rights himself and points.

Light. It's faint, but it's there. Dororo walks toward it, and Jukai follows. It's like following a firefly in the dark, and he's almost afraid he'll fall, but the light grows brighter as he gets closer, and he realizes that it is a man carrying a torch.

The man is familiar; his bald head and empty eye sockets take on a sheen from the torchlight. Biwamaru. Jukai hails him while he's still a ways off, and gets the benefit of the priest's wide and generous smile.

"You know the old priest?" Dororo asks.

"We've met before," Jukai answers.

"Ch. Where's aniki?"

Good question. For fifty feet or so around Biwamaru, light illumines the space, casting shadows off of two figures. The first is the boy wearing Daigo's livery that had chased Hyakkimaru at the river. Without thinking, Jukai grips Dororo's shoulder and yanks him back, recalling this person's rage and demonic aura.

Dororo shakes his hand off. "That's Tahoumaru. Hyakkimaru's younger brother."

Jukai's heart clenches. "I saw him before. He was trying to kill-"

"-that was the demon," Dororo says, cutting him off. Jukai looks from the boy to Biwamaru. Biwamaru doesn't seem to regard him as a threat, and Jukai moves around him to observe the other figure in the dark.

It's Hyakkimaru's mother, hugging her knees so tightly that her face is hidden in them. Her shoulders shake. Jukai stops in front of her and asks, "Are you all right?"

She lifts her face, and he sees that she is crying-silently, but crying just the same. "I am-"

"Daigo attacked her when she passed through the palace compound," Biwamaru says behind him. "Do you have more bandages? I stopped the bleeding but-"

Jukai looks down at the woman's kimono. A dark red slash mars the beautiful fabric, and Hyakkimaru's mother, always pale, now looks like little more than a ghost.

"Can you save her?" Tahoumaru asks next to him.

"Of course," Jukai says automatically. She is conscious, sitting up, and the bleeding has stopped. There is every indication that she will live. He sets down his box and retrieves a roll of bandages. "But I would feel better about it if we could start another fire."

"You fear infection?"

"Better safe than not."

Dororo interprets this as a request for firewood and takes off running. Jukai calls out to stop him, but he doesn't listen. To Biwamaru, he asks, "Is he always like that?"

"He should be safe here," Biwamaru says. "The armies haven't reached the capital yet. And he's fast." Jukai asks Hyakkimaru's mother, very politely, to lie down. She complies with a little groan, and Tahoumaru helps lay her out while Jukai moves the soiled fabric away from her wound.

It isn't deep. If it was, she'd already be dead-but it's long: from her upper abdomen under her breast to just above her bellybutton. Biwamaru had been right to try to stop the bleeding first: none of her entrails are hanging out, and it seems like even the stomach is still structurally sound.

"She must have gotten out of the way of Daigo's cut," Jukai mutters.

"I blocked it," Biwamaru says. "Enough to save her, I hope."

"Why didn't you finish off Daigo, then?"

"He refused to fight a priest and left her for dead. Speaking of which-where is Daigo now?"

"Dead, himself."

"I see. You were successful." His face looks pinched and sorrowful, as if he is unhappy that Daigo could not be saved. He nods to a place in darkness that Jukai can't see, and says, "So was he."

Until Biwamaru had indicated the precise spot in the gathering dark, Jukai had not been able to see Hyakkimaru at all.

"He's got his eyes back and he's sulking," Dororo says in a tone of disdain, running back to them with an armful of scrap wood. "It's like the ears all over again, I swear-he freaked out and the old priest sent me to get a doctor and told me I'd find one in your direction, so..."

Jukai stops listening. It is too much, too fast, too unexpected. Hyakkimaru looks up at him, and their eyes meet for the first time.

By some trick of fate or lineage, he has Daigo's eyes: they are his shape and color, and the dim light makes the slightly lighter center burn like coals. But as he looks closer, he sees that they are different. Scared, for one. Not bitter or calculating, either.

Jukai decides that he doesn't have Daigo's eyes after all. Just his own.

Tears well up in Jukai's own eyes so fast that he can't see. He lets go of the roll of bandages in his hand, and it goes spiraling away toward Dororo, his patient temporarily forgotten. Tahoumaru had had Hyakkimaru's eyes-but no longer, and they are both alive. "How-?"

"Well," Biwamaru says, crouching to his level,"you had an interesting idea, using that statue." Biwamaru retrieves the roll of bandages and crouches completely down to help with Hyakkimaru's mother's injury. "This woman, here, Nui no Kata, prayed to the Goddess when her son was born. It's why the demons didn't get his head. It's probably why he lived."

"So you came on this battle and appealed to the Goddess of Mercy?" Jukai asks. It isn't like he hadn't tried that himself: ever since Hyakkimaru had visited him, half-whole and half-feral, he'd prayed consistently for some kind of cure or reprieve.

"No," Biwamaru says. "She did."

"And it worked again," Jukai breathes, rooting an iron pot out of his box. "Unbelievable."

"Believe it," Hyakkimaru says, but he doesn't come closer. Jukai notices that he's blinking too much, and he remembers what Dororo said about his sight. He must hate the torch.

"I need water," Jukai says, and Dororo takes off running with his pot in hand, and Jukai thinks that Dororo is darned useful.

"I didn't understand what I was doing," Tahoumaru says, so faintly he can scarcely be heard. "Was that-possession? Did the demons take over me?"

"Only one, as far as I could tell, Biwamaru says.

"Where is it now?"

"Probably back in its statue in the Hall of Hell," Biwamaru says.

"You mean-you couldn't kill it?"

Biwamaru smiles his sanguine smile. "Goddesses of Mercy don't kill, child."

There is a silence in which Nui no Kata's breathing seems too loud. Crickets chirp as the world gets darker. When Dororo returns from his trip to get water, he yells, "Hey, aniki, help me build a fire."

"I don't want to."

"We need one. Want your mom to die?"

Under the pressure of Dororo's relentless attention, Hyakkimaru gets on his feet and takes two hesitant steps toward Dororo. Jukai watches, fascinated. When Hyakkimaru had described his friend, he hadn't imagined anyone like this. Half his size with a huge personality, and seems able to get Hyakkimaru to do pretty much anything-including stop killing.

Dororo isn't just useful. He must be a saint.

"Today, aniki!" Dororo says, piling dead grass up in front of himself and retrieving a tiny flintstone from his side pouch.

Hyakkimaru's shoulders rise and fall, and he approaches the torch as if he's terrified of it, but he does approach. He closes his eyes firmly shut, and starts, rather clumsily, helping Dororo build the fire.

Without thinking, Jukai holds out a roll of bandages to Dororo. Dororo looks down at it and nods. Then he wraps the bandage around Hyakkimaru's eyes, and Hyakkimaru breathes an entirely audible sigh of relief.

After the fire is built and the bandages are boiled, the old priest fetches fresh water in the pot and puts in some dried fish and bones for a broth; Nui no Kata can't each much, and all of them are hungry. When Nui no Kata finally drifts off to sleep, Biwamaru, Jukai and Tahoumaru gather near the fire. Dororo finds the dark corner where Hyakkimaru is still hiding, and goes there to give him a different sort of light.

Jukai wants to follow him, but he still has questions for Biwamaru. "So this," Jukai says to Biwamaru, picking up the statue of the Goddess of Mercy, "helped us after all."

Biwamaru smiles. "All I do is seek better ways. Like you, I can't restore anything to what it was before. I can't erase a lifetime of terror and violence. But I think we've restored what we could, and made the loss more," Biwamaru pauses, then says, "tolerable."

Tahoumaru breathes out deeply and places a palm over his missing eye. He sighs. "My father is dead." He looks at Jukai. "You killed him?"

"Yes."

"Why?"

"Because someone had to. For the good of my son."

Tahoumaru flicks a glance at Hyakkimaru. He smiles, but it's bitter. "Yeah. I guess I understand that." He closes his one good eye and rests his chin in one hand. "I thought I was fighting for something more important than anything else, too. But now-"

"-Now," Biwamaru finishes, "Daigo falls to the Asakura clan. His wife and his heir won't find any refuge here."

Tahoumaru nods. "I fought for it, but I've lost everything."

"Not, everything," his mother gasps, apparently not asleep yet after all. She reaches for Tahoumaru's hand. He takes it, shoulders shaking, clearly using every resource he has to not break down crying.

This is another child that Daigo destroyed with his ambitions, and Jukai is surprised that he was ever afraid of him.

"What will you do now?" Biwamaru asks Tahoumaru.

"What choices do I have?" Tahoumaru asks, half-screaming, and he's crying now and shows no signs of stopping. Behind him, Dororo, talking animatedly to Hyakkimaru, goes still and listens. "I'll stay here and let them take our heads. The palace is gone. The retainers have fled. Mutsu and Hyougo are-" He chokes on his words and stands up. "It might be better if I did it myself."

He makes as if to draw his sword, and Biwamaru makes a shushing gesture. "That's only if you stay here, son. There's a whole wide world out there where no one even knows who Daigo is."

"You think I should flee? Like a coward?"

"I think you should live." There is no threat in his tone, but Jukai gets the feeling that if Tahoumaru were to actually draw, the old priest would knock him over.

"Me too." Hyakkimaru's voice comes from fifty feet away, but it is perfectly audible. "Live."

Tahoumaru turns to look at him, and snorts. "As if you get a vote."

"I think he does," Biwamaru says. "He spared you, over and over and over again. Until the demons forced your hands, he never wanted to kill you."

Tears fall from Tahoumaru's cheeks to his neck, staining his haori. He ignores them. "Why? I wanted to kill you. I wanted to kill you so badly-"

There is a brief silence: Hyakkimaru considers. Eventually, he says, "You're my younger brother." And that's all.

The rest of the night passes quietly. Before he goes to sleep, he sees Hyakkimaru giving Dororo a piggyback ride away from the fire; apparently, they're going someplace darker.

He's not scared for them. He knows Dororo will bring them back here in the morning.

The next morning, Hyakkimaru breaks out dried fruit and Biwamaru produces more fish to feed them all. Jukai offers up his boat to Nui no Kata and Tahoumaru. She can't walk well yet and won't be able to for a while, and they'll need to travel quickly if they want to get away.

There is also the issue of clothing; the symbol of Daigo is too conspicuous, and Nui no Kata's kimono is completely ruined. Fortunately, much of the town had been abandoned in place when the palace had burned down, meaning that many shops and stores had left their wares behind. Dororo returns from a scavenging mission with new clothing and shoes for Tahoumaru and Nui no Kata, in appropriate sizes, and Jukai considers that Dororo must have stolen clothing before.

They break camp at mid-morning and go down to the river where Jukai had moored his boat. He provides extra bandages to Tahoumaru for his mother, and Hyakkimaru offers up the rest of his food, which Tahoumaru is reluctant to take. "Take. I give it."

"I don't want it."

"You need it," Biwamaru says, forcing Hyakkimaru's pack into the boat. "Unless you can eat pride."

Tahoumaru scowls and accepts with bad grace, but Nui no Kata thanks them all-too politely, as always.

Before Jukai unmoors the boat completely, Nui no Kata calls out to Hyakkimaru, who stiffens.

"Please," she says, "there's just-one thing-"

"What?" Hyakkimaru asks.

"I only ever got to hold you once," she explains. "Just one more time-" She extends her arms, and Tahoumaru crouches behind her to admonish her for straining herself and potentially upending the boat.

Hyakkimaru hesitates. Dororo kicks him in the leg. He sighs, then climbs into the boat, eyes still wrapped tight, and submits to a series of passionate hugs from his mother-and, though he can't physically see them, a varied series of death glares from his brother.

Nui no Kata's hands move to the tied bandage, and Dororo leaps forward, saying, "Don't!"

"I'm sorry," Nui no Kata says. "It's selfish of me, but I want you to see me-once."

Hyakkimaru flinches, but doesn't move her hands away from him. When the bandage falls away, his eyes are shut tight, but Nui no Kata touches his face and he opens them.

Nui no Kata gasps, possibly seeing the same resemblance that Jukai had seen at first, then she hugs him again. "I always loved you. I always will." Carefully, slowly-too slowly, judging by how Tahoumaru is tapping his foot-she wraps the bandage around Hyakkimaru's eyes again.

Hyakkimaru leaves the boat. Jukai finishes untying it, and it drifts away, Tahoumaru manning the short oars while Nui no Kata reclines.

"Do you think they'll be okay?" Dororo asks.

"I don't know," Jukai says. "I hope so."

Jukai watches them vanish in the distance, remembering another child cast adrift in the same boat on a day so long ago that there's a mist over it in his memory, and he reflects that at least Tahoumaru has his mother.

* * *

Jukai attempts to keep Biwamaru with them, but Biwamaru insists that his work hunting demons and protecting the innocent isn't done.

"We may have to hunt demons again, and those two children are innocent," Jukai insists.

"They have you," Biwamaru says. "I am sure they will be safe. There are others that may not be."

It's a fair point, but Jukai still resents it when Biwamaru leaves them one morning and doesn't return. It's just the three of them around the fire at night now-and there are still demons, even if they aren't the ravening monsters of old.

Hyakkimaru gets along a lot better without his eyes than with them, at least at first. When bird demons attack them in the middle of the night, Hyakkimaru keeps his eyes firmly shut and identifies them by hearing, killing three in a single swipe as they converge down upon him in a hunting formation. He cuts their chests instead of their heads, as seemed to be his aim, because he's not used to the reach of his arms and the long sword. Jukai will need to work with him on that when they get the time.

When a spider demon attacks during the day, Hyakkimaru panics and gets caught in its web trying to rescue Dororo, and Jukai cuts them loose with a hm of amusement. Spider demons are unfortunate, but usually not deadly, and he considers that he spent too much time teaching Hyakkimaru to fight and not enough time teaching him how not to.

Another thing to remedy, when they have the time. But they are traveling now, away from a war zone, and there is no time. As they go, Hyakkimaru gradually spends more time with his eyes uncovered each day, though he still usually keeps them shut.

They are roughly one week away from Jukai's old house-assuming it's still standing-when Jukai starts noticing something odd about Dororo.

For one, he never bathes with them, even when they stop expressly for this purpose. He also always goes to relieve himself on his own, and never gets dressed or undressed in front of either of them. At first, Jukai had thought him shy or hiding some wound, but the behavior marks a peculiar pattern.

Rather than confront Dororo, Jukai decides to ask Hyakkimaru about it.

At night, when Dororo is asleep and Hyakkimaru has his eyes uncovered looking everywhere but the fire, he asks, "You've never told me-what you see."

Hyakkimaru snorts. "I liked seeing better before."

Jukai tilts his head. "Before?"

"I could see demons. People. Plants. Simple. Now-" Hyakkimaru shrugs. "It's too much-noise. Too much filtering. It hurts."

Jukai nods. That makes sense. "I think you'll get used to it, in time." He pauses. "Have you-seen Dororo?"

"Dororo is sleeping like a log right there." He points.

"I know, but I mean-seen."

Hyakkimaru smiles a little. "I told him you would figure it out. He didn't listen."

"But he's-a she." Jukai is blushing because even though he's never thought of Dororo as anything but a boy before now, the implications of him and his son traveling everywhere with a little girl are more-well. He's embarrassed by all the things he's had Dororo do for him. They should be taking care of her, not the other way around.

"That's one way to look at it," Hyakkimaru says.

"It's the truth."

"You're wrong," Hyakkimaru says. "Dororo is a boy."

That line of reasoning leads in circles; Jukai asks what he really wanted to know in the first place: "Did you know?"

"Yes."

"For how long?"

Hyakkimaru frowns. "Doesn't matter. A long time. Dororo wants to be a boy, so Dororo is a boy."

This statement strikes Jukai as very childish. "But eventually..."

"'Eventually' is not 'now,'" Hyakkimaru counters, his voice hardening at the edges like the tempered steel he carries at his side. "Respect the now."

Childish or not, there's some wisdom in that. He looks down at Dororo, sound asleep and snoring, safer in this world by masquerading as a boy than being the girl she was born as.

It breaks his heart, it does, but he doesn't let Dororo know that he knows about-her? him?-he's unsure of his footing here, but Hyakkimaru seems to have adapted to this reality without much difficulty. Surely, he can, too.

Eventually.

* * *

When they reach Jukai's house, two outer walls are burned out and missing, and the exposed rooms inside have been invaded by mice and other vermin. Hyakkimaru cheerfully slaughters mice while Dororo uses old bedding and soiled bandages to clean floors; they make a temporary roof out of a blanket, and at least it's a dry place to sleep.

The rainy season is set to start soon, so they waste no time in building up the house. As it had been, it was slightly too cramped for two people, much less three, so after they have a place to sleep, Jukai plans to build another room on the ground floor for patients, and perhaps a second floor. He's not as young as he used to be, but he has two energetic young helpers, and Jukai would like to have his hospital again.

It takes all of the rainy season to build the house, and all of the hot summer after to cure the straw for tatami and roofing; it isn't until the end of summer that Jukai considers himself equipped to make prosthetics again. While he gathers materials and makes new tools, Hyakkimaru and Dororo chase one another around the woods where Hyakkimaru grew up, and there is peace.

It doesn't last. Bird demons show up in increasing numbers, and kamaitachi and mud demons haunt the woods. In short order, Jukai thinks it's about time someone taught Dororo the sword.

Hyakkimaru apparently has the same idea, because when he goes to propose the idea to Dororo, he finds Dororo and Hyakkimaru searching the trees for a decent stick to use as a practice sword.

When the rains have been over for almost a full month, Dororo is so full of black-and-blue bruises that he looks mottled purple, but he is also exhilarated. He's been begging to be taught the sword since Jukai encountered him, after all. When Jukai is done making prosthetics and drying herbs, he often joins them in practice, correcting a stance here or a grip there, providing a large target for the tiny child.

He sincerely hopes she-no, he-will never have to use the sword on another person.

* * *

When Jukai is building a table for patients to rest on one day, Dororo approaches shyly with a small packet of seed rice and says, "Um."

"'Um'? What?" Jukai asks.

"I, uh, got this from a friend a long time ago, and was wondering if it was still good."

Jukai has known seed rice to keep, if not wet or soiled, for five years or more, but he has no way of knowing how old this stock is. "There's one way to find out," he says. "We could plant it."

"We can?" Dororo sounds excited, and looks over his shoulder to see a stricken Hyakkimaru standing in the doorway, covering his ears.

"What's wrong?" he asks.

Hyakkimaru doesn't say anything.

Jukai turns and inspects Dororo's seed rice a little closer. "Rice is hard to plant. If we're going to do it, it's going to need all three of us." He looks, significantly, at Hyakkimaru. "Is that all right?"

Hyakkimaru looks at Dororo. "It's what she and Take would have wanted," he says. "We have to get it all back for them, too."

She?

Hyakkimaru nods, but turns his face away. "I'll start digging."

* * *

It's hard work, planting rice, but neither child complains.

In piecework fashion, first out of Dororo, more gradually out of Hyakkimaru, Jukai learns about Mio, and Takeo, and the orphans at the temple that Daigo had burned. Hyakkimaru's psychotic rage when facing down his brother and the demons threatening Jukai on the battlefield starts to make more sense, but there's nothing Jukai can do to close the wound of losing a first love to such tragedy. He doubts Hyakkimaru can love like that again. He's glad-eternally glad-that his son has Dororo.

They plant rice all summer, and when autumn comes around they harvest. Dororo is enchanted by the world in fall, eyes growing big and round as he points out every new shade of red to Hyakkimaru. "This is what I always wanted you to see! It's red, but it's not like blood at all."

It's true. The red of autumn is the red of dying, but not the red of killing. Since Jukai had killed Daigo, Hyakkimaru had not had to kill a single person. If Jukai has his way, neither he nor Dororo will ever have to kill anyone ever again.

Demons are another story. When one of the kamaitachi invades the rice field, Hyakkimaru goes on a three-day crusade to eliminate all the creatures from the forest. He is gone so long that Dororo starts driving Jukai crazy with speculations that he's dead.

"He's not dead."

"But what if he is?"

"He's not."

"He is!"

Sigh.

When he does come back, he's not alone: Biwamaru had been passing through the forest, and a very bloody (but much calmer) Hyakkimaru brings him home for a dinner of rice and fresh fish. Dororo and Hyakkimaru eat quickly so that they can fit in sword training before bed, and Jukai watches them practice out the window with the sun setting behind them, the world gloriously red.

Sitting across from him Biwamaru asks, "So, are you building that better world?"

Dororo whacks Hyakkimaru in the head with a wooden sword, and he smiles at her and whacks her back, with much less force. The rice field next to them is small, but golden, redolent with shining clumps of grass from their uneven harvesting. Jukai's hospital is incomplete, but mostly functional, and with help, and a little more time, he'll be able to keep restoring what others have lost.

He looks at Biwamaru and picks up his chopsticks, hovering them over his food. "We are."

Biwamaru looks out the window at the children. "So I see."

Biwamaru never stays for very long, but whenever he visits, he brings patients.

At first, he brings animals-crushed dogs that had gotten trampled under wagons; injured warhorses too skittish and pained to move well-but, eventually, people.

War has come back to the land, if it ever left. That was always inevitable. Jukai is glad to be of help, but he wishes he'd had a little more time in peace.

On a cold day at the end of autumn, Biwamaru brings Tahoumaru, broken and bleeding with one hand missing, and Nui no Kata, who has fainted-from hunger, or cold, or perhaps both.

When they arrive, Hyakkimaru and Dororo are outside gathering wood for their winter stockpile and not in eyeshot. Jukai wants to wait for them to begin treatment, but there's no time; Tahoumaru's wound has gone white around the edges and black in the center, and he needs to act now.

He asks Biwamaru to set Nui no Kata down on one of his surgical tables and get her a blanket, then try reviving her. Biwamaru complies, and he takes Tahoumaru by his good arm and sits him down on a mat next to the fire, throwing bandages into an already boiling pot of water.

"Fancy seeing you here, old man," Tahoumaru grumbles, and Jukai smiles because there's no real threat in this boy. Not anymore. This world is cruel, terribly cruel, and he feels nothing but pity for Tahoumaru now.

"This will hurt," Jukai says, taking a poker from the side of the hearth and sticking it in the fire. "A lot. But if I don't get the poison out of the wound, it will kill you."

"How's my mother?"

"She'll live. You might not. Are you all right with that?"

"Yes." Tears form at the corners of Tahoumaru's eyes. "I'm-not enough. I'll never be enough. I couldn't protect myself. I could barely protect her. I-"

"You did protect her, that's what matters," Jukai says. "And you're safe here. I'm going to help you." He pulls Tahoumaru's chin up, forcing eye contact, and Tahoumaru flinches. "You need care," he says. "And you have no right to die before your mother. Not if I can save you."

Tahoumaru nods shakily. He accepts the poker to the wound with only a light cry, then passes out.

When Nui no Kata revives some minutes later, she is distraught, but there's not much he can do about that until Tahoumaru wakes up.

Tahoumaru's infection causes a fever that lasts for five days. He drifts in and out of consciousness, and the only good thing about it from Jukai's perspective is that five days is a good long time to feed up Nui no Kata, who had been starving.

The world outside has always been cruel. Handless and starving, it will be crueler still, but Jukai can't make the decision to take in the man that wanted to kill his son, even if that man is his brother. If Nui no Kata asked to stay, he would probably say yes, but she is too proud-and she would never abandon Tahoumaru.

The fever breaks on the fifth day, and Tahoumaru awakes with Hyakkimaru changing his bandage and Dororo getting a wet cloth for his head, and he looks at them with a crazy expression, as if he thinks the world's gone insane.

Jukai offers him a gentle smile. "You're back with us, I see," Jukai says.

"How long?"

"Five days."

"Five-! Where's my mother?"

"I'm here," Nui no Kata calls, responding to his voice and entering the room, accepting the wet cloth from Dororo. She dabs his forehead and says, "You slept a long time, but you're all right." She hugs him so tightly he gusts out air, and hugs her back more gently.

Jukai clears his throat. "If you're looking for a place to find work around here, the locals always need bodyguards to protect the trade wagons," he suggests. "When you're well, of course. We can teach you to use a sword with your left hand, or course."

"Of course," Tahoumaru answers woodenly, and Jukai sees the gears of his mind turning perfectly: Of course they can't stay here, the doctor needs all the available beds for the ill and injured. But until Jukai had said it, it didn't seem like Tahoumaru had fully understood that he would have to leave.

This is precisely why Jukai had said it. He is offering his children a choice. If Hyakkimaru chooses to reject Tahoumaru now-or vice versa-he won't object either way.

Tahoumaru looks from Hyakkimaru to Dororo and shakes his head. "I don't get it," he says. "I tried to kill you-both of you, at some point. Why are you helping me?"

Dororo's mouth falls open as if he's shocked.

For once, Hyakkimaru beats Dororo to a response. "Daigo doesn't exist anymore," he says. "I'm Hyakkimaru. You're Tahoumaru, my younger brother. That's all."

Dororo nods slowly and faces Hyakkimaru. "But if you expect me to call him 'aniki,' I will punch both of you in the face."

Hyakkimaru smiles and settles back on his heels, no threat in him, looking about half his age, and Jukai wonders how his younger brother could have ever hated him enough to try to kill him.

Nui no Kata lets Tahoumaru go and stands up. "And what about me? Am I...will I..."

Hyakkimaru stops smiling. "I have a mom," he says, nodding to Jukai. "But Tahoumaru needs one."

That may be the closest thing she'll ever get to acceptance. Jukai understands the answer, even if she might think it's unfair. It's not his mother's fault that Daigo made the deal with the demons.

"Could we really," Tahoumaru sputters out before Hyakkimaru can say anything else, "could we-stay here?"

Jukai looks at Hyakkimaru, who looks at Dororo. None of them move for a minute. Nui no Kata sucks in a harsh breath.

Then Dororo asks Tahoumaru, "How good are you at planting rice?"

THE END


End file.
